


Respite

by 100demons



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Third Shinobi War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 05:58:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8434306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/100demons/pseuds/100demons
Summary: A conversation between Kakashi and Tsunade during the war.
  “You don’t have to go through with this, you know. You can always have the eye removed.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [forbiddenstars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/forbiddenstars/gifts).



> I'm so sorry this is so late, I got a little lost on the road of life....but I hope you enjoy it anyway! Thank you so much for your lovely comments and support, I truly appreciate it!

The medic lets herself in after a sharp, authoritative knock, the white sliding doors squeaking a little as she passes through. Even with his senses so dulled that he can barely feel the difference between his own body and the hospital bed, he knows who it is.

“Well,” Tsunade says, her voice like cut glass. “I know you’re up. Don’t bother pretending that you’re asleep.”

There’s a harsh scrape as one of the chairs in the room shifts back, to let her settle into a seat by his side.

Kakashi opens his eye a crack, letting the dimmed sunlight filter through. Tsunade’s hair is tied back in a loose, messy ponytail, slowly falling apart; there are bags underneath her eyes, dried blood in the bed of her nails, and her hands are trembling, even as she curls them into tight, bone-white fists. Kakashi closes his eye again. The war has not been kind to either of them, it seems.

“How are you feeling?”

Kakashi lifts one hand, just a touch, in a negligent gesture. “Fine,” he rasps. And he is fine, more fine than he has ever been in the past six months. He feels adrift from his own body, his soul strangely detached from the physical world, his thoughts swaddled in a soft, numbing cloud.

Perhaps it helps that he can no longer feel the left side of his head. For the first time since his death, Kakashi can no longer feel the ever-present, never-fading pain of Obito’s aching eye. He feels unmoored without the dull, throbbing reminder that anchors him to reality, to the war that rages on, outside the walls of the hospital.

“Tch. As if,” Tsunade huffs out, her breath quick and impatient. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a terrible liar?”

Unbidden, Minato-sensei’s face ripples up in the still waters of Kakashi’s mind, his mouth curved in a small, knowing smile. _Try again, Kakashi-kun._

Kakashi says nothing.

“At any rate, I came in to check in on you before we prep you for the surgery.” There’s a pause. And then: “You don’t have to go through with this, you know. You can always have the eye removed.”

Slowly, Kakashi raises a hand to his face, to the thick bandage that covers the left side of his face. It feels hot when he touches it, the medical-grade seals reacting strongly to the presence of chakra in his fingers. “I don’t think so,” Kakashi says. “Why would you dull a knife that you need?” Kakashi knows his value: Hatake genius paired with a Sharingan only a tomoe away from full completion. It’s the only reason he’s been taken away from the front lines, to force his body to accept Obito’s eye that it’s so cruelly rejecting.

“Rin would have never wanted--”

“Rin’s dead,” says Kakashi, quiet, and he knows this because he killed her two days ago. Distantly, he can still feel her blood drying underneath his fingernails. “Would I have needed this surgery if she were still alive?”

There’s a long silence.

At last, Tsunade says, “No. When she died--” _when I killed Rin_ , he silently corrects her in his head “--the chakra constructs that were holding the transplantation together collapsed. Without those, your immune system now recognizes the Sharingan as a foreign body. If we had more time, if there weren’t a war…” Her voice trails off, because they do not have any time, and there is a war.

Kakashi opens his eye again and stares up at the hospital ceiling. There’s a water stain in the far eastern corner, shaped like an elephant mid-sneeze. “I do have one request.”

Tsunade snorts, and it’s a wet, ugly sound. Kakashi thinks she may be holding back tears. “Alright, let’s hear it.”

“If the surgery fails, don’t bother taking his eye out. Let me have it, until the end.”

“...you’re sure about this?”

Until Obito’s eye dies, or Kakashi does, it doesn’t matter. He wants to the keep the gift of Obito’s tears and Rin’s gentle touch with him, no matter what.

“Yes,” Kakashi says firmly. “I’m sure.” And he knows that this is impossible, that the seals and the drugs and Kakashi’s own exhaustion have blanketed Obito’s eye underneath suffocating layers of quiet, but he thinks he can feel Obito’s eye twinge, just a little, and grow wet.

 _Crybaby_ , Kakashi thinks reflexively and it’s the last thought he has before Tsunade presses a warm, glowing hand against his forehead, sending him into a deep sleep.


End file.
